Elaine Meinel Supkis
Another sign of our stumbling empire: NASA is buying Russian rockets, not just hiring them to lift stuff to the space station, we are buying the actual rockets because the Shuttle is falling apart. Years ago, back in the late 1970's, rocket developers cautioned Congress to begin work on new space mission systems because the Shuttles would not last beyond 2000.
MosNewsNASA has agreed to the price and the delivery dates of the four spacecrafts from the Russian Federal Space Agency, RIA Novosti news agency reported.
NASA is to buy four Russian ships including two Soyuz and two Progress spacecrafts.
“NASA wishes to retire its Shuttles as soon as possible to ensure funds for the construction of their new craft,” the head of Russia’s manned flight programs Alexie Krasnov said. ’We are happy to help with the availability of our reliable vehicles.“
Earlier in the year it was reported that NASA was interested in buying the services of one Soyuz to allow US astronauts to travel to and from the ISS as a contingency for any problems with their Space Shuttle fleet.
Even as we bellow around the world, screaming at Russia and China about their lack of human rights, lack of democracy, lack of cooperation with disarming only those nations that are against Israeli aggression, we quietly go to Russia, cup in hand, begging for their technology or to China, cup in hand, begging for money.
Back in the 1970's, rocket scientists warned Congress, they must begin preparing for the 21st century by funding and hiring rocket scientists to work on future generations of space craft, not just work on various satellites. When Bush became President, one of the interest groups he appealed to were the space buffs who wanted to go to Mars and beyond.
From the very beginning of the movement to launch humans into space, there has been a tendency for this to be sponsored mostly by right wing organizations or the various organizations pushing for this were heavily infiltrated with right wingers. This was because the liberal community always wanted to spend money on things at home.
I was always a cross-over person, politically very liberal, nay, radical, while still having strong conservative impulses such as balancing budgets, etc.---I always believed that the survival of humanity hinges on not only colonizing this solar system but also interstellar colonization. Back in the old days when a few people listened to me, I used to push Congress to fund futuristic enterprises and I often told them, investing in young rocket scientists was important for America's future and getting people to think about interstellar flight was necessary because all cultures need some distant goal or they rot and die.
Welcome to the land of rotting death.
I am no longer a young lady but am an older crone (cackle). I watched optimism in a future space program die. Yes, it died! And I can tell the exact date of its death: a debate at the University Club in Manhattan during the election between Reagan's vision of the future and Carter's vision of the future.
Carter dismayed many people in the space movement because he was always talking about dealing with the energy crisis by cutting back on consumption and living differently. He was, despite a number of good NASA initiatives, basically withdrawing from the notion of a space race. Reagan projected the usual right-wing Macht by loudly declaiming he would flex American military might and rule the earth and defeat our enemies, explore space by ourselves, etc. And all this, while cutting taxes.
William Safire and I were facing down each other. I had few tools in my kit to counter him because liberals don't support space programs for the most part. They always have attacked me for this because 'first you must fix everything on earth,' they would say and I would say, 'That is impossible. And if we don't do this, we will go down with the ship when the earth has problems as it inevitably shall!'
Well, Safire was all excited about the possibility of developing the Star Wars system which was barely past the 'written on a napkin' stage. Not that this mattered much, Reagan's tax cut program was still on the napkin stage, too. The infamous Laffer curve business.
Russia was romping around the world, sticking their ass into every possible quagmire they could find as we retreated from these very same quagmires. Reagan was representing the military/industrial complex that was hurting from post-Vietnam war cuts. The joke was, we were going to cut taxes and raise military spending, see? And all would be well, no deficits. A lot of the people wanting a viable space program were scared of this Russian expansion into mostly third world countries. They thought we would all end up commie or dead, a terrible thing for them.
Well, I said back then, that day, 'Any system we create to neutralize Russian missiles will simply be countered at less cost by changing the way the missiles are launched. Such as launching many dummy missiles before the ones with the warheads are launched.'
Safire gloated, he suggested that the window of opportunity when Russia still hasn't made these missiles, we could launch a sneak attack and destroy them! I was agast.
Um, that was a war crime. The charge we had against the Japanese was just that: they launched a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor! Well, we can plainly see, the right wing's belief that it is OK to launch sneak attacks is now our policy. Namely, we gave ourselves the right to do this under Bush Jr.
On top of everything, back in that debate in 1979, I was upset to see my side of the argument was failing to gain any traction. People desperately wanted to believe that we could cut taxes, grow the military budget and have a very big space program all at the same time! I understood the need to bribe the voters to choose someone who is going to do multiple things, all of which clash with each other. But for people like Safire to fall for this, he, unlike me, is a heavily published bloviator in the mainstream!
Many of the people there that day thought the space colonization movement would be funded alongside the militarization of space movement. I warned everyone, the military would eat up everything because it is a historically corrupt organization more interested in feeding executives interested in playing golf and buying fancy houses, not exploring space or even more significantly, protecting America (as we see today, like on 9/11, they did virtually nothing!).
I lost that debate because people wanted to live on the Good Ship Lollipop and not in reality land. Now enough years has passed and everything I warned about has come true. Cassandra wasn't appreciated nor am I. But alas, the habit of cutting taxes and not balancing budgets has destroyed our economy. The habit of trying to control the whole planet and all of space via military power is collapsing in defeat after defeat as even virtually unarmed peasants pull us into the mud and strangle us.
The lust to put Russia in its place has totally collapsed and now we must go to them for help, just to keep a toe dipped in space, we are relying on them bailing us out! Instead of many generations of rocket scientists working towards a distant but useful goal, we have a much smaller group of scientists trying to make rockets that can take down rockets while we can't put even a monkey into space? And the sea of red ink means we have no future in space. The day the Chinese cut our loans, we die.
We can't do squat. Even now, if we stop all our wars and began to live within our means, we have no money for a real space program that is about humans traveling to Mars and beyond. Griffith, when he was tapped to lead NASA, thought he was going to get funding to do all sorts of great things. Instead, he is there to stop scientists from studying the planet earth or talking about stopping the militarization of space.
I explained back in 1979, if we militarize space, Russia (and China) would match us and this would destabilize alliances on earth and cause all sorts of really bad problems which is why we had to negotiates SALT treaties and sign the Peaceful Uses of Space Treaty at the UN. I always supported and still do support, international initiatives such as the one started by Jimmy Carter with the Skylab/Soyuz experience. Even as Russia invaded Afghanistan, the need to work with and not against the Russians still existed so far as space was concerned.
As we invade various countries, the rest of the world still works with us on space programs. But the fly in the ointment here is financial: we can't afford a space program while funding floundering invasions. Imagine NASA with a $500 billion dollar budget! The mind reels!
Instead, the feeble programs we see today barely limp along and thanks to privatization, it is far more costly than before while producing less and less and worse, the mind of the public as well as the government, is elsewhere. Very few are thinking about it anymore. The dying interest in all things to do with space is very obvious to me: over the years, the desire to play fantasy rather than doing hard science has been growing in our culture.
Science Fiction books are waning and magic/fantasy books are growing in number. Gaming is mostly fantasy, not science fiction in nature. The rocket scientist is no longer held in high esteem and many in the liberal community consider a rocket scientist to be a mad scientist out to destroy the world and unfortunately, this is rather close to the truth thanks to the constant flow of funds into the Star Wars system which is all about WWIII, not exploring the universe.
It is worse: the American system relies entirely on young people taking a terrible chance with their futures and investing (and paying for) their own training in the various sciences that make up the rocket building fields. If one makes the wrong choices, one has no future and tons of debts to pay off. I saw this firsthand with a number of very bright young scientists who wanted to build interstellar rockets and work on the various fields and theories required to plan for this future.
They ended up jobless! Most changed their fields of endeavor but the tragedy is, they were needed in their theoretical fields if we expect to have a future in space! Requiring individuals to plan for the far future without any security that they will be protected and funded, is lunacy. Which is why no sane student will take a chance at this anymore! Meanwhile, in China and now in Russia, the state insures students in certain fields like these are protected and pulled into the system.
So America's space program limps on, dependent upon other nations producing scientists which we then hire. The nurturing of our own citizens in this field is faltering. Anyone looking into the backgrounds of students in many space-related fields including laser technology, etc, sees an army of foreign students!
This latest news about how we must go to Russia for our space program, is most disheartening. A number of newly-rich computer-based enterprise moguls have tried to create a private manned space program, for example. They can create some exciting prototypes but turning this into a money making venture without tapping the wealth of the state is proving to be nearly impossible. Unlike sending up simple satellites, the expenses of manned space flight are very high.
But not impossibly high. Only if we are also spending money, like Russia so ruinously did from 1976-1989, trying to oppress angry peasants in distant lands or hold down all of Eastern Europe in the face of powerful anti-Soviet sentiment, do we go bankrupt. And even if we totally kill NASA and end attempts at exploring space, we will still go bankrupt.
Because our military is eating up all the budget, relentlessly. As we see this week with wars spreading like wildfire.
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"Years ago, back in the late 1970's, rocket developers cautioned Congress to begin work on new space mission systems because the Shuttles would not last beyond 2000."
But no...
"the liberal community always wanted to spend money on things at home."
I always supported space exploration, and my more-liberal friends always said that every space launch meant more starving people in ghettos.
I'm still in favor of space exploration, but you get MUCH more return on investment with unmanned (robotic) missions. People need baggage: air, food, water, and shielding from hard radiation. Manned missions make no sense.
Posted by: JSmith | January 12, 2007 at 09:17 AM
Correct, Smith. My support of space programs is at odds with liberal sentiments. They ignore my warnings that a culture that doesn't explore or conquer, dies.
My warnings to right wingers that conquering mindlessly leads to fatal destruction is also unheeded. They mouth off the 'winning minds and hearts' stuff while relying entirely on brute force and sneering hubris.
With the usual results.
And we MUST go, ourselves, into space. If we only rely on robots, we lose in the end. The robots win. Looks like they will win, anyway. Gads.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | January 12, 2007 at 09:21 AM
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
Posted by: blues | January 12, 2007 at 09:42 AM
Buying Russian Rockets. Great, and we can watch the launch on our Asian TVs mounted in our cars built in Latin America.
200+ years to build this country. 20+ to take it apart.
Would the last one to leave America, please remember to turn off the light.
Posted by: Liberal AND Proud | January 12, 2007 at 12:17 PM
Just today an article in a local newspaper recounts the budget shortfalls of both the Fermilab and the Argonne National Laboratory. The Fermilab may have to close temporarily. Two of my nieces went to high school in Fermilab's home town. Their neighbors were physicists and other assorted geeks - or are they considered nerds? (Another niece gave me a tutorial last week on emo, gothic, etc.) Swell, huh? Maybe BushBoy can send the unemployed scientists to Iraq.
For all the conservatives who love privatization and also the space program, ask them if any US entity - gov't. or private industry - could pull off Apollo 11 today.
Posted by: D.F. Facti | January 12, 2007 at 01:13 PM
D.F. Facti...they'd get to the moon...and pay for the whole program by having Neil Armstrong step on the moon and shout..."COCA COLA"!!
Posted by: Liberal AND Proud | January 12, 2007 at 01:17 PM
I see the endgame now. Over at dKoss, this poor nerd posted this "diary" about how General Wesley Clark is, like Jimmy Carter, moaning about how Israel controls the US. He's been tagged with the indelible "troll diary" stigmata! he's scheduled for a speedy "rapture" out of there!
But I see that is not the story at all. Wesley and Jimmy can't see it. Nobody gives a damn about "Israel," which is scheduled to be raptured out with us. If Olmert gave a damn about "Israel," he would try to keep the US afloat, obviously. This rocket deal show clearly who cares about the US! So during the rapture, Olmert and Lieberman and Bush and Cheney stay behind, in Paraguay.
The "Israel gimmick" was not different than the "Anglican gimmick," merely another distraction. Boy this really is lousy. I get to be slaughtered like the fattened American hogs with their Hummers and giant ranches in the suburbs. Olmert cares about "Israel" the same way Bush cares about stem cells.
Posted by: blues | January 12, 2007 at 01:22 PM
L&P,
Of course! How thick I am!
Posted by: D.F. Facti | January 12, 2007 at 02:09 PM
Next: Pigs in space.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | January 12, 2007 at 02:29 PM
Like I always tell 'em, they don't call me blues for nothing. I may be nearly ready to apply for a job with Darth Putin of Hu the Merciless. I would go right to Rove, but I have no cred as a gay porn star.
Posted by: blues | January 12, 2007 at 03:06 PM
Blues, just pretend to be a reporter like Gannon.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | January 12, 2007 at 05:35 PM
Very, very nicely done!
Posted by: mulberry factory | November 21, 2011 at 08:50 AM
hey i like that rocket design, believe it or not that could be their new rocket design, thanks
Posted by: Taylor Hill | December 29, 2011 at 06:00 PM